FIFA 13 | So You Want A… Goalkeeper

Alright, FIFA 13 is out and you’ve started a career mode. If you need a goalkeeper who will become a world-beater but won’t cost the Earth, you’ve come to the right place.

The aim of this series, as last year, is to provide a shortlist of players that meet this requirement. All players have at least potential 80, and all will have an OVR of 73 or lower. The original intention of this (in the FIFA 12 series) was to keep costs down, but looking at this list I’m not sure that’s a problem any more! Still, I’ll stick to 73 or lower for the sake of avoiding overwhelming you with options.

The first thing you’ll probably notice are the prices – £2.8m for Leali, with potential 88?! He cost £5.5m in FIFA 12, almost twice as much. Just over half a million for Cragno, who grows to 85?! Yes my friends, this is going to be a good year for cheap players. The rest of the “So You Want A…” series is much the same.

A new addition this year is that player contracts have a huge impact. The fewer years left on the contract, the more likely you are to get a good deal. So if a player only has 1 year left on his contract you can get him for much less than his asking price. As such, I’ve added a column that says how many years are left on each player’s contract, and whether you can get him in the first transfer window. That’s the “Avai?” column (short for “available?”). To save space I’ve formatted it like this: Y/3 would mean yes, you can buy this player in the first window, and he has 3 years left on his contract. If it says something like “N/5” that means he has a 5 year contract and you can’t get him at first (the “N” is because he’s just joined the club), but you may be able to get them in the next window. The ones to look out for are Y/1 or Y/0, as some players only have months left on their contracts. Players who are on loan will have a “-” in this column because information on their contracts is not available.

Finally, if you see that a team is low on this position buy alprazolam 0.5 when you go to buy a player, don’t be put off. On FIFA 12 this meant, essentially, that you’d never be able to buy this player, as his team would never buy backups and thus would always refuse to sell him. In FIFA 13, however, it just means that you have to pay a little extra to get him.

Anyway, enough yapping, onto the recommendations:

Nicola Leali

Alessio Cragno

Simon Sluga

This one is more or less self explanatory – Nicola Leali. You can get the chance to have a goalkeeper who will be one of the very best in the world, and all for around £3m! That was totally unheard of in FIFA 12, so don’t miss this chance. Just be aware that you may need to wait until the winter transfer window (or possibly longer) to get him. A loan to buy deal may work though. Either way, you will never regret buying him.

Perhaps even more incredible is that you can get Alessio Cragno – potential 85! – for less than £1m. Don’t be put off by his OVR, as I’ve been informed that on FIFA 13 you can buy a player and loan him out in the same year (like in real life), so buy Cragno, loan him out and give him a chance to grow, then bring him back and reap the rewards.

Holy moly look at that – Simon Sluga has potential 80 and costs £240,000! What is the world coming to? In FIFA 12 I was stunned when a goalkeeper like Joseph Hu (potential 80) cost £775,000. Sluga costs less than a third of that, and isn’t even the only one to be way under a million on this list alone. You’d be a fool not to get him. Even if you loan him out to grow him and then sell him, you’ll still have made loads of money. I don’t know why players are so cheap this year, but I love it! Take advantage of it and get Sluga.

As in FIFA 12, make sure you keep checking these players, as their prices and OVR may fluctuate radically after over time. If you’ve had any experience of this (especially if a player’s price drops), please post it in the comments.

Comments 45

He’s glitched. Every time EA release a squad update they seem to secretly change a few players’ potentials so that they become superstars. Ramos seems to be one of them, so he becomes one of the best keepers in the world!

All the potentials here are the potentials in the game code. The great thing about FIFA 13 is that players can exceed their potential if they do well enough. So the potential isn’t wrong (as it’s taken directly from the game), but you’ve managed to exceed it 🙂 how old was he when he got to 84? And has he kept growing beyond that?

Well when I wrote this article his potential wasn’t quite good enough to get in. He was one of those young players who for some reason EA thinks will only grow about 4 points over their whole career. The good news is that I think his potential has gone up to around 80 now. And if he’s what you’re looking for then definitely go for him, as you could get him to go over his potential if he plays well 🙂

Hey, many thanks for this database, it’s been really helpful but your comment about changing potentials during the (real life) transfer window has worried me… I started this career just before the last transfer activity was applied and downloaded the latest squads. To be specific:

In my career, Jack Robinson (18 yo LB of Liverpool), had NOT yet been loaned to Wolves but in the Latest Squads he has been loaned to Wolves.

In my career I bought Cragno, but do I have the lower potential Cragno? Or do I still have all of the original potentials with semi-updated squads? I just don’t know which roster to search for my career.

Not sure, that’s a tricky one. I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to reset the squads to default and do a new career like that (unless of course you’re quite far into your career now). Seeing as you started your career before the winter transfers you won’t have lost much.

The problem is that this year EA have been releasing player OVR/potential updates on a weekly basis. I don’t know at what point Cragno’s potential changed, and there’s no real way of knowing.

However, the good news is that players can exceed their potential if they play well enough, so even if you have the lower-potential Cragno you could still make him into a very good player. I’ve seen people getting their players 20 points over their potential, so it’s doable 🙂

Please help. I bought Leali 2 seasons ago but his overall only went up by 1 he’s still 68. I don’t play him every match only like 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 because i have Ter Stegan as my main keeper Is it normal for Leali to be so low because of that? or it’s like a bug or something? He was in good form ( light green ) for those 2 seasons.

The problem with GKs is that they need to play lots in order to grow. I’d either sell Leali or make him your first choice keeper. Unfortunately loaning doesn’t help either as they won’t grow even if you find a good team for them :/

The best thing to do is only have 2 GKs – the young one that you want to develop and a backup. Make sure the backup GK is worse than your young one, as that way he won’t complain about not getting much game time, allowing you to play your young GK a lot and thereby help his development.

There are a few players who in real life are loaned out but on FIFA it says they’re permanently at their loan clubs (Leali is one). The reason is that if all those players went back to their parent clubs, the parent clubs would have more than the 42 player limit for their squad, which would break the game. So some players have to stay at their loan clubs for ever.

Masi should stay at his loan club for 2 seasons and then return to his parent club. You should be able to buy him after that (although by that point he’ll probably be pretty expensive).

Yo, alex wondering about gk from valencia Felipe Ramos: one season he’s 63 the next 83 ovr!!!! Is that a glitch or something? Oh btw here’s his stats and stuff as he gets better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C-osCUVrsk Got any clues to why this is?

Yeah there are a few players who have glitched potentials. The ones that people have noticed (from what I can remember) are Bahoken, Berthomier, Aycicek, Evseev, Yeray, Felipe Ramos, Eizmendi, Hallam Hope and McAleny. For example, I think Aycicek has potential 72, yet on my career he’s at 88 OVR so far and is worth crazy money, and I’ve seen people say he gets into the 90s. He went from 58 to 83 OVR in one season!

However, it gets stranger. Many of these players are on the same team (Bahoken and Berthomier at OGC Nice, Aycicek and Evseev at Hannover 96, Hope and McAleny at Everton). If that happens, only one of those players will grow to amazing heights, whilst the other won’t. So on mine Berthomier is rated 85 or something, but Bahoken is down in the late 60s I think. Sometimes neither grow – both Hope and McAleny are in the early 60s on mine.

It always seems to be some variation on these players no matter whose career we’re talking about – it could be my game, your game, my neighbour’s game, etc, but it always seems to be a selection of those players listed above who have ridiculous growth. This suggests it’s either a bug that occurred when these players were created, or it’s intentional on EA’s part (don’t know why they’d do it though – maybe to spice things up a bit? :P). No idea which it is though.

I have no idea why this happens, but that’s what I know about it for now.

Surprised you didn’t include Anthony Lopes. He has one year remaining on his deal. Soo you could get him for less than a million pounds. For a 68 rated goalie that develops into 81(or more depending on performance) that is crazy!

I did include him, he’s on the list 😛 Or do you mean I didn’t recommend him? That’s true, but the problem is there are just so many people to recommend there’s not enough space haha. But thanks for the tip 🙂

thanks heaps for that i was unaware about not being able to get traits like flair! also does this apply to skill moves and weak foot? can you get more stars as you get a higher OVR? cheers again and love the site! keep up the good work!

hi again also can young players who dont have any traits or specialties get them when they get to a higher level? im mostley concerned about the flair trait? can a player who doesnt have the flair trait get it once he gets a higher OVR? any help would be great

Players can gain specialities (the little badges like speedster or strength), but they can’t get traits (things like flair or long throw-in). Specialities are triggered by stats reaching a threshold – e.g. to get the dribbling speciality you need to have 75+ balance and 86+ dribbling. Things like the flair trait aren’t triggered by stats, they’re separate, and unfortunately players either have them or they don’t :/

hi love the site i had been keeping all my own records and stats untill i found your site? one suggestion though could you PLEASE add whether players have a commentary name or profile picture? as im really fussy with who i buy and i only buy players with a profile picture ( which sometimes really sucks as there are some great players with no picture? eg CRAGNO, SLUGA etc. ) and its so much more enjoyable when you actually hear the commentator say the players name when he gets the ball? cheers heaps mate

Well unfortunately I sim almost all of my games so I don’t actually know about whether they have a commentary name. However, I’ve been told that if a scouted player has a name that is in the commentator’s list of names to read out then it will actually be read out, unlike last year. Back in FIFA 12 you could find a player named, say, Jones, but the commentator wouldn’t read out his name. That’s different this year (thankfully), so at least that’s a plus 🙂

I can’t really include that because it all depends. Some players will grow really well because they’re playing well, then if you tried again and they played badly they’d probably grow more slowly. Sometimes players on computer teams will shoot up, other times they don’t. Unfortunately there’s really no way of knowing for sure, you just have to play them lots and try to get them into a run of good form.

It could well be because of that. Unfortunately there’s not really any way to know – the two most authoritative sites for player potentials (FIFA Fanatic and So FIFA) use the default squads, not the latest ones. That’s why I always recommend people start careers with the default squads – at least that way they know for sure what player OVRs and potentials will be.

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